Information Technology (IT) Project Closure

¶ … Closure Yahoo! Concedes Australias Online Auction to Ebay The article this paper will review, in relation to project closure and I.T. management, is Keith Regan's Yahoo! Concedes Down-Under Auction Market to Ebay. Recently, Yahoo! announced to its customers its decision of closing down the Australian online auction site sold.com.au. The announcement was posted in the auction site itself (currently, the auction site is already owned by Ebay). Yahoo! handed down sold.com.au to its auction giant rival Ebay.

Yahoo! bought sold.com.au two years ago from Fairfax at the price of AU$24 milllion. That time, the auction site was making a sale profit of AU$12 milllion. However, for Yahoo!, Australia's online auction was not able to establish more customers and did not give the dot-com giant enough profit. Sold.com.au's performance in the Internet auction market seemed to be far from Down Under's achievements, an online information portal in which Yahoo! remains a giant and maintains good customer feedbacks.

Buying Australia's online auction from Fairfax was certainly a management move taken by Yahoo! two years ago to dominate the Australian online market. The site was making good business profits from its customers then. Yahoo! perhaps saw that being able to own the online auction of Australia is a business move that would provide them better company revenues and more online domains. The failure of Yahoo! In winning more customers for sold.com.au, however, was caused by a management failure in providing a satisfactory service to customers.

In their two years of being in the online market of Australia, based from the current scenario of conceding the site to Ebay, they perhaps were not able to see enough project management strategies, to implement in sold.com.au, that would provide growth in their Australian online market share. Hence, the site did not make them a key player in the online auction market of Australia.

Ebay's decision, on the other hand, in buying sold.com.au is a step that can lead them into a more dominating online rival of Yahoo! Previous to their decision of taking over sold.com.au, they had made more investments in the Australian and New Zealand online market.

According to analysts, Ebay is making a play to dominate "online Australia." If project management of sold.com.au did not smoothly went through for Yahoo!, Ebay is perhaps seeing project management techniques in attracting customers, as how they are currently and are successfully achieving from their other online endeavors. Any online business needs good project management strategies to win better online attractions. Being "online" would mean the need to implement the best state-of-the-art techniques an I.T. project management can offer in the best way it can.

After all, being in the "online" market is a product of being in "I.T.." To get good project returns, delivery of good project management is essential because "online" competition is tough these days as there is a continuous growth of online market.

From Keith Regan's article, Lisa Strand, a senior analyst of Nielsen/NetRatings, indicates that Even the fastest-growing Internet companies need to find new growth markets to replace the meteoric growth here at home" think you'll see the battles happening all over the map." Obviously, it can be deducted that the management of Yahoo!'s project sold.com.au did not go well to achieve success from its online customers in Australia.

Yahoo! sees other areas where they can get better returns, causing them to cede sold.com.au (Rosenberg, C., Last Hurray as Yahoo! Folds Sold Auction Site to Join Ebay). With the project closure of Yahoo!'s sold.com.au, winning the project management of the auction site is an advantage for Ebay. Their intention and goal in becoming a key player in the online market seems not far to achieve. Currently, Ebay invests $150 million to win the Chinese market through EachNet.com.

Statistics of NetRatings show that Ebay is continuing to become a giant in the Australian online market. Ebay was able to receive 1.2 million unique customers for the auction site, compared to the 300,000 Yahoo! had drawn. Based on the business performances Yahoo! And Ebay show, it is clear that there is a tough and healthy competition between the two online giants. In the past, Yahoo! is the dominating company of the online market. This is due to.